I thought there might be benefit in fleshing out a bit more on my other article today. You see, since I wrote it, a little while back, I’ve seen lots of commentary suggesting that an understanding of what it means to be right wing as opposed to far right might help. I also thought that a bit of my own back story would help.
The first thing I would say is that you pick up a lot of your political thinking early in life from parents and grandparents. It’s one reason as to why politics tends to be tribal. So, for me, whilst I’ve talked about an act of rebellion, it wasn’t against family so much. However to identify as a Conservative in South Bradford was a big deal. I stood as a Conservative in the mock election our school ran in 1992 and finished a distant bottom!
I decided join the Conservative Party the following summer after heading off to University. I was at Sheffield where there wasn’t a Conservative Students’ branch. So with the help of the area chairman I decided to set one up. You couldn’t have a stall at the Fresher’s Fayre if you weren’t already registered as a society. To register as a society you needed to have a minimum number of members which made for a rather closed shop affair. So, we went into the concourse with bags of goodies, sign up forms and members cards. We were soon surrounded by a large group of Socialist Workers who threatened and jostled us, demanding we left town. Things were looking ugly until a group of other students came and stood with us and helped us escape into the Union building. They introduced themselves as the debating society and then asked if I could help out. They were hosting a panel debate to start term on the new world order. They had a Communist and an Islamist on the panel. Could I represent the centre right?
So I cut my political teeth in student politics. I learned what it meant to be roughed up for your views. My door to my room was vandalized with hate messages. I found out how a politically biased media could distort things. I raised a complaint about the student newspaper. The panel admitted that a Socialist Worker was editor and accepted all of my evidence but then ruled that the paper still wasn’t biased! I also got to be the next area chairman. As well as having some great opportunities to regularly visit Westminster for meetings and get to know senior politicians including a visit to Downing Street to meet John Major, I got to learn some other useful things too. I learnt how to debate and respond to hecklers, to speak and hold a hostile argument, to argue a case (my law degree was helping with that too). I learnt too how to grow and multiply things vee started new branches in Huddersfield, Leeds and even Bradford (the branch founding Chairman was a certain Gavin Williams). I learnt how to give media interviews too.
Importantly, I learnt more about the connection of faith and politics. I spoke in that early debate as a Christian as well as a Conservative, especially as moral issues such as abortion were thrown our way.
As quickly as it started, my political career finished. I realised that there were things about the political scene that didn’t sit with being a Christian. It’s not that I didn’t think you could or should be a Christian and in politics, it’s that I realised that this wasn’t where God wanted me to be and that I had to make a choice in life. So I left the party.
My main political views haven’t changed since, though I have changed my mind on some things. For example I grew up instinctively Euro-sceptic and voted to leave the EU. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced that was the best time to do it and the way we then implemented Brexit was nuts but I still think that on balance we are going to be better off out.
I changed my mind on the death penalty, a look at the fallibility of the justice system does that for you. I also changed my mind about immigration. That happened over time partly through getting to know asylum seekers, partly because the Holy Spirit convicted me of the sin of racism (and I would have been one of those people who would have said “I’m not racist. I have friends from other backgrounds, it’s not about race it’s about Islamisation and mass immigration etc). Finally, it clicked that if you believed in free markets which I did and do, then with that came free movement of knowledge, goods and services and with that had to come free movement of people. Then I remember reading a Fraser Nelson article commenting that shops and businesses didn’t have queues and waiting lists caused by immigration It was the state/public sector that had a problem with it not the wider/private sector.
When I went into church ministry I concluded that in our context it was best that people did not know the politics of the elders, not so much in terms of their view points on different matters but in terms of their voting habits and by then so much had changed about the Conservative Party that you need not assume I was duty bound to vote for them. I know others who happily declare their politics, though interestingly that seems to suit those more on the left than the right. Then in 2019, I came to the conclusion where morally we did not have to and probably (though I’d not try to impose on others) shouldn’t make what was being presented as a choice between the lesser of two evils
I thought it might be helpful at this stage to share a couple of brief reflections. First for those of you who sit on the political left. It is easy to paint a caricature that those on the right are there because of greed and nastiness. It was after all, Theresa May who labelled her own tribe “the nasty party”. And yes there is plenty of nastiness, greed, selfishness there. It’s true of all parties though and I’ve encountered the nastiness of the left. But also, yes, the political offering of the right has often been packaged up in that way too.
However, there are plenty of people on the right, in politics or who vote that way out of sense of civic duty and great compassion for others. We will talk about how compassion shapes views on tax and economics probably next time.
I would also want to address those who are now claiming to be representing the right, especially Christians and who are associating themselves with things like the Unite the Kingdom Movement and who complain that they are being maligned as far right. It includes those who talk about “reaching the right” and mean by that standing in platforms making speeches at rallies with Tommy Robinson. What you have been taught to think of as just “right wing politics” and are being told was considered just mainstream 30 years ago isn’t. It is an entirely different beast. Take it from someone who has been there involved on the political right as a Christian. The very things we hear said and seen done today were considered a different and dangerous beast then. The far right has evolved and pivoted but it is still the same beast. I say this out of love for brothers and sisters. You are being drawn into something toxic, nasty and anti-Christ, something you don’t understand. That’s why I keep offering a conversation. I still hope to see some of you rescued out of it.
Finally, I want to encourage younger Christians who are considering a life in politics whether on the left or the right. First, one way or another, there are going to be costs and sacrifices. For me but meant giving up completely on ambition. I had aspired to go into politics. I thought I might make it to cabinet, some of my peers did. I fancied being Prime Minister one day. I reckon I might just have achieved some of that! For others, the sacrifice will be that your faith limits how far you can go as Tim Farron found out. However, I still think that for the right people,bit is a good and worthwhile thing to get into
Faithroots 